With fire-breathing religion figuring anew in global conflicts, and political discussions at home often dominated by the nuttery of the Christian right, you might get the sense that somebody’s god is ready to mug you around every street corner. But if you’re the type who doesn’t like to hang your hat on organized religion, here’s a bit of good news: n America, your numbers are growing.

There are more religiously unaffiliated people in the U.S. today than ever before. Starting in the 1980s, a variety of polls using different methodologies have come to the same conclusion: people who do not identify with religious labels are on the rise, perhaps even doubling in that time frame.

Some call them “nones”: agnostics, atheists, deists, secular humanists, general humanists, and people who just don’t care to identify with any religious group. It’s not exactly correct to call them nonbelievers, because some still have faith and spirituality in some sense or another. A 2012 Pew study noted that 30 percent of these people believe in “God or universal spirit” and around 20 percent even pray every day. But according to the latest research, Americans checking the “none of the above” box will make up an increasingly important force in the country. Other groups, like born-again evangelicals, have grown more percentage-wise, but the nones have them beat in absolute numbers.

Private companies like Google now have the legal right to use the kind of spy satellite technology once reserved for agencies like the NSA.

Our homes have been on Google for years, but the detail was limited to objects no larger than about 20 inches. Last year the US Department of Commerce lifted restrictions that essentially allow companies like Google and Microsoft (which owns Bing) to show images to the world as small as 12 inches.

That means they can use pictures of your property with far greater detail – potentially showing features like the color of your mailbox, objects sitting in your backyard, and even the types of plants growing in your garden.

“You can actually definitely see (car) windshields,” DigitalGlobe’s Kumar Navulur told Gigaom.com. DigitalGlobe is one of the satellite companies using the new technology. “We can actually tell you whether it’s a truck or an SUV or a regular car. We can identify pictures of a baseball diamond.”

From “Polio programme: let us declare victory and move on” by Neetu Vashisht and Jacob Puliyel at Medical Ethics:

“In 2011 there were an extra 47500 new cases of NPAFP [non-polio acute flaccid paralysis]. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Through this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated.”

he Oral Polio Vaccines were given to Indian children. The CDC dropped the OPV from its vaccine schedule in the US because it was causing polio.

“In 1976, Dr. Jonas Salk, creator of the killed-virus vaccine used in the 1950s, testified that the live-virus vaccine (used almost exclusively in the U.S. from the early 1960s to 2000) was the ‘principal if not sole cause’ of all reported polio cases in the U.S. since 1961 [44]. (The virus remains in the throat for one to two weeks and in the feces for up to two months. Thus, vaccine recipients are at risk, and can potentially spread the disease, as long as fecal excretion of the virus continues [45].) In 1992, the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an admission that the live-virus vaccine had become the dominant cause of polio in the United States [36]. In fact, according to CDC figures, every case of polio in the U.S. since 1979 was caused by the oral polio vaccine [36]. Authorities claim the vaccine was responsible for about eight cases of polio every year [46]. However, an independent study that analyzed the government’s own vaccine database during a recent period of less than five years uncovered 13,641 reports of adverse events following use of the oral polio vaccine. These reports included 6,364 emergency room visits and 540 deaths (Figure 3) [47,48]. Public outrage at these tragedies became the impetus for removing the oral polio vaccine from immunization schedules [36:568;37;38].”

Did Gates not know the OPV had been dropped in the US as he suggested he wanted to bring the same good health to third world countries as Western countries enjoyed? If he did not know, is he pushing vaccines on the world’s children without such basic and truly critical information?

This time, the Iraqis are claiming they shot down a US Helicopter in the Al-Bagdadi region in Anbar Province last week. The reason for shooting the helicopter, according to FARS and, apparently, high-ranking Iraqi officials, was that the helicopter was carrying weapons to ISIS.

Head of the Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee and senior Iraqi legislator, Hakem al-Zameli has stated that the Iraqi government is constantly receiving reports from its security forces that NATO aircraft is dropping weapons to ISIS.

Zameli claims that the reason for the airdrops is that NATO wishes to prolong the situation in Anbar Province for geopolitical purposes.

Zameli stated that “The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL.”

He ought to know. Over his professional tenure, Grant has authored several peer-review journal articles specific to the health effects of cannabis, including a 2003 report which concluded that the long-term heavy use of pot was not associated with the “substantial, systematic, and detrimental effect of cannabis use on neuropsychological performance.”

“Based on evidence currently available the Schedule I classification is not tenable; it is not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking,” the article concluded.

Speaking at this year’s AAAS meeting, Grant said that smoking cannabis long-term is associated with bronchitis. But he cautioned that purported links between cannabis and the onset of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia have yet to be established. He also warned that allegations that cannabis harms the brain “are very weak at the moment.”

Former NASA Astronaut, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, has said a mission to the moon would be far cheaper and safer than going to Mars, and that it would act as a good rehearsal before attempting to visit the red planet.

A mission to the moon would be infinitely cheaper, shorter, and safer than a trip to Mars, which is partly why Hoffman says it makes more sense to revisit our lunar neighbor before we attempt to conquer the Red Planet.

The moon is nearly 600 times closer than Mars, and we already have a history of successfully landing on it. During the Apollo missions, NASA sent 24 astronauts to the moon, 12 of whom walked on the surface.

Does this success make the moon any less interesting to explore? Of course not!

“We basically just scratched the surface during Apollo, you know,” Hoffman told Business Insider. “Some people say, ‘Oh, been there. Done that.’ They just don’t understand.”

And he’s not the only one who thinks this.

Retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield agrees that the moon is a more sensible goal. NASA’s spacecraft Orion was built to shepherd astronauts to Mars by the 2030s, and “that is a great vehicle,” Hadfield told The Guardian. “But where we are going to go next is the moon.”

He continued: “That’s where we are going to go because it just makes sense. It is only three days away and we can invent so many things.”

Hoffman and Hadfield have a point — and it’s one quickly lost in the minds of Mars-dreamers like Mars One and SpaceX’s Elon Musk.

You voted with your dollar. You spoke out on social media. You educated your co-workers who were eating a junk-food diet. Thanks to this influence, organic food sales are exploding, so one of the largest retailers in the US is ‘doubling down’ their investment in organic and sustainable products.

Target’s initiative is called ‘Made to Matter,’ and it will nearly double the number of sustainable and organic products it sells. The chain has already included an exclusive collection of 16 brands and over 100 individual products that were introduced last year – ranging from bleach-free diapers to nonaerosol air fresheners.

The reason for their big changes? Money. Your vote. They believe by changing and expanding their product line, they could make more than $1 billion this year.

According to Kathee Tesija, executive vice president and chief merchandising and supply chain officer, Target is expected to report annual sales of $73.2 billion in the near future – largely due to these changes.

This comes at a time when food companies such as Breyer’s, Nestle, Hershey, and many others are making their own shifts toward more healthful, natural ingredients. The health movement has taken hold, and will continue to push companies in the direction much-needed for a better food system.

The Made to Matter initiative is part of a reassessment Target is making of its grocery business.

Under Target’s new CEO, Brian Cornell, the company is looking to set itself apart by marketing different products in the grocery, health and wellness aisle. It’s part of a broader strategy which doesn’t include organic food, but other consumer goods; however, the company is betting big on consumer demand for organic.

]]>http://truthisscary.com/2015/03/video-the-red-pill-podcast-episode-7-wjoseph-peterson-kevin-savo/feed/0The New “Net Neutrality”: A Dystopian Nightmare Where Everyone And Everything Will Be Monitored On The Internethttp://truthisscary.com/2015/03/the-new-net-neutrality-a-dystopian-nightmare-where-everyone-and-everything-will-be-monitored-on-the-internet/
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Can you imagine a world where your home, your vehicles, your appliances and every single electronic device that you own is constantly connected to the Internet? This is not some grand vision that is being planned for some day in the future. This is something that is being systematically implemented right now. In 2015, we already have “smart homes”, vehicles that talk to one another, refrigeratorsthat are connected to the Internet, and televisions that spy on us. Our world is becoming increasingly interconnected, and that opens up some wonderful possibilities. But there is also a downside. What if we rapidly reach a point where one must be connected to the Internet in order to function in society? Will there come a day when we can’t even do basic things such as buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without it? And what about the potential for government abuse? Could an “Internet of Things” create a dystopian nightmare where everyone and everything will be constantly monitored and tracked by the government? That is something to think about.

Today, the Internet has become such an integral part of our lives that it is hard to remember how we ever survived without it. And with each passing year, the number of devices connected to the Internet continues to grow at an exponential rate. If you have never heard of the “Internet of Things” before, here is a little bit about it from Wikipedia…

Things, in the IoT, can refer to a wide variety of devices such as heart monitoring implants, biochip transponders on farm animals, electric clams in coastal waters, automobiles with built-in sensors, or field operation devices that assist fire-fighters in search and rescue. These devices collect useful data with the help of various existing technologies and then autonomously flow the data between other devices. Current market examples include smart thermostat systems and washer/dryers that utilize wifi for remote monitoring.

But there is also a dark side to the Internet of Things. Security is a huge issue, and when that security is compromised the consequences can be absolutely horrifying. Just consider the following example…

It is a strange series of events that link two Armenian software engineers; a Shenzen, China-based webcam company; two sets of new parents in the U.S.; and an unknown creep who likes to hack baby monitors to yell obscenities at children. “Wake up, you little ****,” the hacker screamed at the top of his digital lungs last summer when a two-year-old in Houston wouldn’t stir; she happened to be deaf. A year later, a baby monitor hacker struck again yelling obscenities at a 10-month-old in Ohio.

Both families were using an Internet-connected baby monitor made by China-based Foscam. The hacker took advantage of a weakness in the camera’s software design that U.S.-based Armenian computer engineers revealed at a security conference in Amsterdam last April.

The Internet allows us to reach into the outside world from inside our homes, but it also allows the reverse to take place as well.

Do we really want to make ourselves that vulnerable?

Sadly, we live at a time when people don’t really stop to consider the downside to our exploding technological capabilities.

In fact, there are many people that are extremely eager to connect themselves to the Internet of Things.